Why Creative People Are A Puzzle To Others

I have, in my youth, been accused of being a "schizophrenic thinker" and I have to agree. If you have a conversation with me, we're going to chase conversational rabbits. We may start out talking about Mary Shelly's Frankenstein Monster and end up twenty minutes later discussing why Curly Joe was the best Globetrotter player over Meadowlark Lemon.  0_o*  HOW did we get from monsters to basketball? Because something was said that lead down one rabbet trail to another to another until we reached Curly Joe (which would, eventually, lead to Curly as the best of the 3 Stooges, ever! Just ignore Shemp and Joe - although I'll take Shemp over Joe any day... SEE?!?)

I'm very much the same in my creative efforts. I play the piano (not as well as I should, but I do), I write, I create with beads, metal, and (someday) poly clay and have my eye on metal clay, I draw & paint (again, not as well as I should/could, but I do), I play with a camera & photography.... Again, with the schizophrenic thinking, eh?  Show of hands, how many of you are just as schizophrenic in your creativity?  Well, guess what?  This is normal for us!

Not that being like this ever bothered me. No one ever made fun of me for it so I never thought about it. Apparently my friends are either as crazy as me or just enjoy the ride.  That being said, let me share a link to an article I saw on my FB news feed the other day. It was written by Matthew Schuler and he found a book written by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly called  Creativity: The Work and Lives of 91 Eminent People.  Matthew gives us a few of the highlights from Mihaly's work including this line;  “I have devoted 30 years of research to how creative people live and work, to make more understandable the mysterious process by which they come up with new ideas and new things. If I had to express in one word what makes their personalities different from others, it’s complexity. They show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an individual, each of them is a multitude.”

As I read through the 9 contradictory traits described by Mihaly, my first reaction to each was "No, that's not me." But, as I read the full discription (not just the start) I realized that, a) yes, it did too fit me and, b) I really am a "multitude". Well, a multitude of ideas and thoughts and need to do's. Go read Matthew's article here and find out just how much of yourself is a mulititude. Learn why we're such a puzzle to the (supposedly) "Normal People."

Creative people really do live in our own little world, but it's okay. They know us here.